contradictions

APPALLING FACTS



Dear Robert:
Few white moths exist
In the city. Dinginess,
The exhausting hydrocarbon pall,
Blemishes all, marks white
A deadly lack, creates
The urban black moth
(reborn/
A fallen angel).
White spiders become bull’s-eyes,
Jerky sideshow targets
For clenched newsprint.
Blooms wear blackface.
The “design” is Darwin’s.
Life mimes reality.

1980

Educated readers will at once recognize that this poem is a contradiction to a famous poem. The “Robert” to whom the poem is addressed is Robert Frost, one of America’s greatest poets. The poem it seems to contradict is “Design.” Below is Frost’s more famous poem.


DESIGN


I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.


What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Frost’s poem is a sonnet, which fits his purpose very well to explain design in a poem of fixed meter and rhyme. My reply could not have taken the form of a sonnet since my purpose is to show that no intelligent designer has arranged the earth for us, but its elements are a natural transformation influenced by the environment in which living beings exist.

“Appalling Facts” was first published in Monsters in a Half-way House, 1981. Below are items related to this blog.